Dedicated to followers of fashion

WHAT are you wearing? It is an enquiry that can take on different shades depending on who is doing the asking, and why.
A friend might ask it of another before a night out. I should certainly have pressed the phrase into use before turning up to a wedding wearing the same dress as a relative. Legend also suggests the question is a much-used opening gambit on the sort of chat lines that result in telephone number-sized bills.
When said to Adam McVey, the leader of Edinburgh City Council, the query came with an incredulous tone and an invisible exclamation mark at the end.
Mr McVey committed sartorial offence in the eyes of one constituent by turning up tieless to the official signing ceremony for Edinburgh’s £1 billion City Deal. The chap from the Scottish Government was wearing a tie, as was the Scottish Secretary. But there was Mr McVey, brazenly sporting an open-necked shirt.
Norman Tinlin of Fairmilehead Community Council was unimpressed. “Whilst you are free to dress as you wish in your own time,” he wrote to Mr McVey later, “I would hope that when you are representing the City of Edinburgh at official functions … you would at least dress properly and in a manner befitting your position. In my experience those that are casual of dress are casual of mind.”
Well now. The last time I heard a dressing down of such piquancy it came from Meryl Streep, playing the fictional editor of Vogue in The Devil Wears Prada, addressing a scruffy secretary.
Mr McVey, however, is unrepentant. While agreeing that he should project an “appropriate” image of Edinburgh, the SNP councillor for Leith does not think this requires a tie. Moreover,  focussing on his clothes misses the point. “My suits, shirts and jumpers will not build the new homes we need or improve the life chances of a single person in the capital”. One imagines Attlee saying something similar to Churchill after the Second World War.
Does Mr McVey have a point? Should his critics chillax, like former premier and open-necked shirt fan David Cameron? After all, the Commons speaker recently decreed that male MPs can go tieless; Richard Branson has remained a virgin to tie wearing, with many a male executive following his lead; and in Silicon Valley the men have gone a step further, replacing the open-neck shirt with a T-shirt and a Zuckerbergian hoodie.
It is such a sartorially-varied minefield out there in the workplace. A poll of 2000 employees by online retailer Banana Moon found 24% of men had been told off for what they were wearing, usually for having donned shorts and sandals. The culprit, suspected a Banana Moon bod, was the lack of uniforms or a dress code, which left staff to go their own ways with sometimes unfortunate results.
Ties are a particular problem because there is no real substitute. A woman can move from blouse to dress to shirt. A man is either wearing a tie or he is not. He could sport a cravat, but in reality no man has ever worn such a thing without looking like Rupert Bear. For women, it has been heels, to wear or not to wear, that have led to workplace dramas. And don’t think it is only in offices where people get hot and bothered over threads. The Archers had an entire storyline on the war over the wearing of tabards in the village shop (Susan won).
It’s a question of horses for courses. A horse would not turn up to a race wearing a tie because one is not required for him to do the job of  getting from starting post to finishing line faster than the other horses. If you are an accountant or a lawyer, doing serious stuff involving people’s money, folk expect you to look ready for business (clients also like lawyers to look uncomfortable because they usually earn more than them). Nurses and doctors need to dress like Charlie Fairhead from BBC’s Casualty so they can imagine one day being on his wages (dream on people). Where would male teachers be if they binned ties and took to wearing baseball caps like yon embarrassing politicians of yesteryear (yes, you, Messrs Wallace, Salmond, Robertson and Forsyth)?
Perhaps it all comes down to whether an employee is, to use the gruesome jargon, “customer-facing”, as opposed to backroom boys and girls. The latter should be able to wear what they like as long as it is clean and decent.
Having checked out Mr McVey’s Twitter picture I would say he is young enough, at 30, to get away with that kind of “geography teacher meets telly historian” get-up of jacket, jumper and shirt. 
His hair could do with being introduced to a comb, mind.

Class act

NO wonder Donald Trump has failed again to repeal Obamacare. Has there ever been an administration more at war with itself?
This time last week the door of the press briefing room was hitting the tush of departing spokesman Sean Spicer. Heading the other way was Anthony Scaramucci, a Wall Street big-mouth. Brought in to streamline the Tweeter-in-Chief’s communications, Mr Scaramucci has ended his first week in the job by turning the air blue in a phone call to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza. Raging about chief of staff Reince Priebus, Mr S used language not suitable for a dive bar never mind a family newspaper.
Contrast this rabble with the dignity of Senator John McCain. Having revealed last week that he has brain cancer, the former Vietnam War prisoner returned to the Senate to help defeat the Trump bill, a measure that would have stripped health insurance from millions. Mr McCain proves once again to the billionaire president that you can have all the money in the world but it cannot buy class.

One foot in the rave

AT 79, John Prescott seems to be having a rerr old tear as we say in these parts.
Yes, that John Prescott, the former Labour Deputy PM who once thumped a protester who dared to throw an egg at him.
Well, Mr Grumpy no more. He was on a More 4 programme recently pretending to have a rotten time with Roy Hudd and a coachload of red-hat wearing ladies out for a day of fun, fun, fun. He loved it, really, though he swore a lot and refused to join Hudd in wearing a scarlet beret. If he had still been standing for election Momentum would have strung him up for that.
Now, according to the Mail, the old bruiser has been having a cosy chat with Saga magazine about, ahem, bedroom matters. “I no longer want to have sex 20 times a day,” he says. “Who has the energy?”
Too much information John, as cool kids used to say when Labour was in government, but we’re glad you are not going glumly into that good night. If only his old boss Tony Blair would embrace retirement so enthusiastically.